Cleaver

WINTER SPRINGS WEIGHTLIFTING Seminole STATS: Cleaver won the 139-pound weight class during a tri-meet last Wednesday against St. Cloud and Lake Brantley with a 310-pound total. She hoisted 155 in the bench and the clean-and-jerk. The Bears won the meet. SIDELINES: Cleaver, a junior, finished third in her weight class at the unofficial state meet last season.

A Park Service Visitors Center at the Cold Harbor National Battlefield about a quarter-mile up 156 from the Gaines' Mill road offers a good chance to check your bearings, and ask the on-duty Ranger any question that may have might have cropped up since leaving Richmond. And, depending on the day, you may catch Park Service Ranger Randy Cleaver on duty. A 14-year veteran of the Richmond National Battlefield Park, Cleaver has greeted and assisted thousands of visitors that have called on the Richmond Civil War sites.

Don't look now, but the diverse group of would-be senators from California just became more, uh, diverse. The Republicans hoping to face Sen. Alan Cranston had included one supply-side economist, one TV commentator, one ex-police chief, one congresswoman, one Fess Parker and several other notables. Now here comes Eldridge Cleaver.Mr. Cleaver has experience in politics, having run for president in 1968 and for the Berkeley city council in 1984. His resume also includes the best seller Soul on Ice, the Black Panther Party, exile in Algeria, conversion to Christianity and an effort to redesign men's pants.

A man who cut off part of his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend's fingers will spend 30 years in prison, wesh.com is reporting. John Crimins, a habitual felony offender, attacked the man with a meat cleaver in 2009, the website is reporting. To read the article, to go wesh.com

LOS ANGELES -- A fugitive air-hijacking suspect who was returned to the United States last month has told the FBI that while living in Algeria in the early 1970s, he witnessed Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver kill a fellow party member he suspected of having an affair with his wife. The allegations, which the FBI describes as unconfirmed, are contained in documents filed Friday in Los Angeles federal court, where Byron Vaughn Booth, 56, faces charges of air piracy and kidnapping.

With the courses at Palm Beach Polo and Country Club vulnerable to low scores, the leaderboard at the Florida Open is clogged with contenders after two rounds.''It looks like it's going to be a shootout,'' said Tom Cleaver of Boca Raton, the co-leader with Brett Upper of Clearwater at 9-under-par 135. ''It's hard to guess at this point what's going to win, but it's going to be pretty low.''Because of recent rains, players were allowed to lift, clean and place their balls in the fairways during the first two rounds and the pin and tee locations were forgiving.

Leroy ''Eldridge'' Cleaver, a co-founder of the Black Panther Party, underwent surgery Tuesday for a hemorrhage in his brain. Cleaver, 58, was in critical condition at Alta Bates Medical Center. Cleaver, an information minister for the Black Panthers, fled the United States after an April 6, 1968, shootout in West Oakland during which party member Bobby Hutton was killed. He denounced the Black Panthers when he returned to America in 1975.

Eldridge Cleaver was a man who made a significant imprint on our times and not for the best. But I mourn his passing nonetheless.I first met Cleaver when he was Ramparts magazine's most famous and most bloodthirsty ex-con. ``I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist,'' he wrote in a notorious epistle. ``My answer to all such thoughts lurking in their split-level heads, crouching behind their squinting bombardier eyes, is that the blood of Vietnamese peasants has paid off all my debts.

David Cleaver of Eustis and Eric Stibitz of Miami captured the top places in two sailing events Sunday in the Lake Eustis Lightning Invitational Regatta. Cleaver, of the Lake Eustis Sailing Club, won the MC class with 4 1/4 points, more than 10 points better than second-place finisher Roy Knowles, also of Eustis. Knowles scored 14 3/4 points. Bob Dewitt of Clearwater was third with 15 points. Frank Keenan and Bert Lacet tied for fifth. Stibitz scored 10 3/4 points and won by one point over Fisk Hayden of Eustis.

Tampa's Tom Cleaver jumped into a tie for the lead with Tarpon Springs' John Huston after the third round of the lightning-interrupted Florida Open Golf Championship Saturday.Cleaver, who finished second to Tampa's Ron Terry in last year's Open, started the third round at 1 over par but used 29 putts en route to a 5-under 67. Huston, the second-round leader, shot a 72 for a 4-under 211 total.In third place, three shots back, was Deerfield Beach's Jim Weeden, who at one point in Saturday's round was 5 under for the tournament at Innisbrook Resort's 6,999-yard Island course.

WASHINGTON -- Despite what you might have heard, the coming battle on Capitol Hill is not really about "government spending" in the abstract. It's about two radically different visions of how money should be spent. Republicans who feign attacks of the vapors and fainting spells over the big, scary deficit would be more convincing if they didn't begin with the insane premise that defense spending should be sacrosanct. The House leadership in the last few days has begun to signal retreat from this indefensible position, but it's unclear how much of the hyper-conservative GOP majority will follow.

With a scarcity of PGA Tour stars to follow, fans at the Children's Miracle Network Classic took the sentimental approach. Mackenzie Kline, 15, a poster child for CMN who was born with a heart defect, drew about 200 people on the 9th hole of Magnolia on Friday, said Art Cleaver, an eight-time tournament volunteer who worked the hole. Kline is an all-smiles high school golfer who plays with an oxygen tank nearby. She played as an amateur Thursday-Friday. "I think the fans know her story," Cleaver said.

LOS ANGELES -- For one night, jubilation reigns on Wisteria Lane, a suburban block known for blackmail, suicide and murder. Revelers walk the curving street and marvel at the homes' previous incarnations. One was James Stewart's in Harvey, another was the Cleaver dwelling in Leave It to Beaver and a third was the fraternity in Animal House. "It's the best playground in the world," Marc Cherry says. "I am the luckiest guy in show business. I have a whole neighborhood." Cherry has turned this portion of the Universal Studios back lot, often the scene of familial happiness, into the juicy setting for conniving and cattiness on ABC's red-hot serial Desperate Housewives.

Some family secrets seem to come out only at weddings and funerals. Who knows why -- it just seems to be a rule that one or more relatives will eventually say something to scandalize the whole clan. In The Ladies of Eola Heights, Michael Wanzie's new comedy, the Locksdale sisters find they have more than their fair share of secrets when they return to Orlando to plan their father's funeral. The play, directed by Kenny Howard, is a generous heap of wildly funny (and occasionally off-color)

It wasn't just the win, but the way they did it. An appreciative crowd of 15,138 at TD Waterhouse Centre roared its approval Wednesday night, at both the thrill of the victory and the effort it took, giving the new-look Orlando Magic a warm, collective hug. After last season's dismal performance -- a league-low 21 victories -- and the massive exodus of fans, the thumbs-up sign and the excitement in the seats on opening night was more than a little significant....

In 1940, the radio play The Adventures of Superman debuted on the Mutual network with Bud Collyer as the Man of Steel. In 1968, Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver was first published. In 1973, the first release of American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict took place. In 1994, President Clinton signed an $8.6 billion relief package for victims of the Northridge earthquake in Southern California. In 1999, the Senate voted to acquit President Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice; Clinton told Americans he was "profoundly sorry" for what he'd said and done in the Monica Lewinsky affair that triggered it all.

Donna Reed did not live next door to us, Betty Anderson never baby sat for me and Beaver's older brother never cut our grass. My dad never called me ''princess'' like Jim Anderson and, unlike June Cleaver, my mom only put on lipstick when she was planning to go somewhere.Yet I know all these people. I grew up with them as a child of the 1950s. Through the magic of television they became part of my extended family. I laughed at them, cried with them and learned from them.When Beaver Cleaver stole a coveted toy from the local drugstore he was caught.

WINTER SPRINGS WEIGHTLIFTING Seminole STATS: Cleaver won the 139-pound weight class during a tri-meet last Wednesday against St. Cloud and Lake Brantley with a 310-pound total. She hoisted 155 in the bench and the clean-and-jerk. The Bears won the meet. SIDELINES: Cleaver, a junior, finished third in her weight class at the unofficial state meet last season.

Come on in, we're having a Tupperware party. Nope, you don't have to buy anything -- just spend a few fun minutes with ladies like the group at left in one of my favorite photos from the state's great online archive -- floridamemory.com/PhotographicCollection. In glorious black and white, this quartet smiles and waves at us from 1960, decked out in wacky hats made of kitchen colanders. "Sales representatives in `spacettes' costumes pose before the rocket entranceway of Tupperware Home Parties Inc.: Orlando, Florida," the caption reads.